At the time I bought these they were the only USB-C ANC earbuds I could find for sale. So this was my last great hope.I had previously come from some Sony Linkbud-S which lasted a few years before the batteries gave out. Determined to be done with purchasing expensive bluetooth earbuds I setup to find the best pair of USB-C ANC earbuds and what I ended up with was the only pair.Fortunely they are pretty much everything I could have hoped for.First off, sound quality is above average. They sound very flat. Almost like studio monitors. However I am aware that to get the best out of them I need to install Asus Armoury Crate software. This was my first problem. My second is that the earbuds have pulsing LEDs enabled on them by default. On it's own it's not much of an issue, but in public it is. The LEDs seem to prompt everyone to try to initiate a conversation with you. They're also very bright on flights overnight when the cabin lights are turned down.Armoury Crate is available for iOS, Android, and Windows. However the iOS and Android software both only want to detect bluetooth devices. They don't seem to recognize the USB-C headphones as a valid target. I also do not have windows.I was able to check out a windows computer from my school in hopes of installing Armoury Crate. For better or worse, the moment you plug these into your computer it starts installing all the ASUS software. If it were my computer I probably wouldn't like that and it might alarm me. Since it wasn't my computer it was fine. Once the software was going I was able to turn off the LEDs, upgrade the firmware, and mess with the equalizer. I was indeed able to get much better sound with the equalizer. These earbuds also have virtual surround sound which I imagine would be great if you game on windows. Unfortunately the equalizer settings are only applied on the device with the software installed. However, the LED settings will stay applied.For gaming these are probably the BEST wired usb-c earbuds. They are also probably the only ones. Either way I would recommend these for gaming. I would also like to not the auto installed software was numerous, huge, and took forever on my gigabit connection. As mentioned if you are using these for gaming you probably want all this stuff.On any other platform, no worries, nothing installs. But you only get the default flat sound. It's pretty good though overall.With all that out of the way, all the other points are pretty great. The ANC can be controlled from buttons on the cable. They work as you'd expect for nicer bluetooth earbuds. They have volume, pause/play, ANC on (solid LED), ambient mode (blinking), and off (no led). The control board is very light. The headphones are comfortable to wear and the cable has a nice collar which can be slid up to prevent the buds from tangling up.The case works well and the earbuds fit in it easily. I added a picture for reference.The microphone is pretty terrible. The mics are on the earbuds themselves which is not great placement. However it means you can get stereo sound in ambient mode and the noise canceling can discern the source of sound better. It also means you don't have another device on the cable to weigh it down. It's a comfortable design overall. I recorded audio samples using various devices and found the sound quality is about as good as just talking into my Google Pixel 5. Good enough probably.The ANC is pretty decent. It isn't to the level of my linkbud S but it cancels out droning sounds or consistent beeps. Ambient mode drops the volume a bit so you can hear things around you. I like that feature.I've had a few issues with the connector. Nothing major. On my laptop running MX Linux and on my Steamdeck it just works. No issues. On my Pixel 5 it seems to take a moment to kick on. Then it doesn't work. I unnplug and plug it back in and it starts working after about 8 seconds. I also could not connect them to the in-flight entertainment on British Airways. Their USB plug on their screens aren't actually connected to the device so you'll need something with a headphone jack for that.Overall I'm very happy with these earbuds. i expect they will last many years. I plan on buying another set too so I can leave some at work. At the full price it might seem a bit high for wired earbuds but remember there are no batteries to die and make the product obsolete. These will last forever basically and I expect wired earbuds, especially with ANC will not exist for much longer so grab yours while you can.